It was hard to escape Ed “Big Daddy” Roth when I was a kid. To young guys in the 1960s, Roth’s google-eyed character, Rat Fink, was plastered on T-shirts and his monster cars were all the rage for kids of a certain model-kit-building age. Roth, an artist, cartoonist, pinstriper, and custom car designer and builder, was all the rage in the ’60s, and much of model kit manufacturer Revell’s revenues was based on scale versions of Roth’s creations. The man was a brand and industry onto himself, having created the weirdo T-shirt craze that others quickly copied. Some of Roth’s more memorable automotive creations some readers may remember include Tweedy Pie, Mysterion, Beatnik Bandit, Surfite, Outlaw, and the Road Agent.

As a kid, Beau Boeckmann was also a Roth-freak. Now, Boeckmann has taken his interest to another level—he has established a small museum dedicated to Roth vehicles and memorabilia.

Boeckmann, 43, is vice president of Galpin Motors, a Ford dealership in Los Angeles that his father bought in 1946. So he has literally grown up in the car business. And when the news spread that Roth’s Orbitron had been spotted in Mexico after going unseen for decades, Boeckmann was all over it. It was found by El Paso, Texas–based car hunter Michael Lightbourn. Lightbourn frequently travels south of the border in search of significant American cars that migrated to Mexico and stumbled on Orbitron in the city of Juarez, where it was basically a dumpster in the front of a sex and video shop. The shop’s owner was reluctant to sell, but the partly destroyed hot rod had languished in front of that store for years, and Lightbourn convinced the owner to sell. Orbitron had deteriorated badly over the decades; the unique front nose cone that carried the car’s distinguished three-headlight pod was missing, and what remained elsewhere was in poor condition. “Michael [Lightbourn] and I started talking at the 2007 SEMA Show,” Boeckmann says. Lightbourn wanted to keep the car and restore it. “But when I told him my vision for the car, we made a deal. So I got on a plane and flew to El Paso to see the car.”

After being used as a makeshift dumpster in Mexico, Beau Boeckmann bought the Ed “Big Daddy” Roth Orbitron and brought it back to California for a full restoration. Photo courtesy Beau Boeckmann.

Boeckmann saw the car in all its depressing glory. He and Lightbourn then drove to Juarez to see where the car had been parked for all those years. “I was a little bit nervous, because Juarez is known as the most dangerous city in North America,” he says.

Once Boeckmann had the car back in LA, he worked with many of the car’s original contractors to assist in the Orbitron’s restoration. Larry Watson and Bill Carter painted the car when it was new in 1964; they painted the car again during its restoration. Joe Perez originally stitched the Orbitron’s upholstery and was hired by Boeckmann the second time around. “The toughest part of the restoration was finding the original type TV set that sat in the dashboard,” Boeckmann says. “Roth did everything by eye,” he adds, “nothing was measured.

“We didn’t change any of Roth’s techniques during the restoration.” So if it’s still a little out-of-this-world, well, all the better.

This immaculate 1963 split-window Sting Ray coupe was a car Leno had coveted for a long time.

Chapter 45 – Leno’s Voluptuous Vette

Jay Leno has the same reaction to great finds as I do: Nothing gets him more stoked than when he discovers another cool old car or bike. Lucky for me, whenever Leno acquires another barn find, he gets so excited that he calls to tell me about it. Certainly one advantage Leno has is being one of the most visible car collectors in the country, if not the world. The former host of the Tonight Show receives lots of letters from people who want to share stories about their cars. Leno said that he personally reads every letter, usually grabbing a handful from the mailbag on the way to lunch. “So I grabbed an envelope from a guy in Michigan,” he says. “People in Michigan live around cars, so I thought it might be something interesting. The letter said that this man wanted to sell me his 1963 Fuel-Injected Corvette.” Leno almost choked on his sandwich. “I’ve been looking for a fuel-injected Split Window for so long,” he says. “But it had to be the right car.” This was the right car. The 1963 Corvette was the first model Sting Ray, known as second generation, or C-2. It was designed by Larry Shinoda with input from Peter Brock and under the direction of Bill Mitchell. At the time, the distinctive sloped rear roof design was a styling breakthrough. However, the rear window was divided by a roof support, which meant the driver had an obstructed view from the inside rear-view mirror.

But despite Father-of-the-Corvette Zora Duntov’s protests regarding the rear window design, Mitchell insisted that it remain. And it did for just one year. Besides being the first Corvette with hide-away headlights and fully independent suspension, 1963 coupes are especially coveted today for their unique rear window styling.

The details of the split window got juicier—the seller said the Vette had just 991 original miles on the odometer!

The odometer on this Sting Ray only reads 991 original miles. The C-2, or Sting Ray, debuted in 1963, but the split rear window only appeared for one model year.

“The story was that the original owner ordered it, then shipped off to Vietnam,” Leno says. “When he got out of the service, he did something that got him in trouble, and he went to prison for 20 years. While he was in the slammer, his grandmother sold the car to a collector, who then sold it to Russ McLean, Corvette Program Manager,” he says. “Nobody ever put any miles on it.”

Leno explains his Corvette is better that he even hoped for. “It’s equipped exactly like I would have ordered one in 1963,” he says. “It has power brakes, roll-up windows, and a four-speed.”

He had the car inspected by National Corvette Restoration Society (NCRS) members, who confirmed the car’s authenticity. “The car is matching-numbers correct, has the correct air cleaner, the correct master cylinder, everything,” Leno says. Leno admits that with only 991 miles on the car, he won’t drive it much. But he is a car guy, and he drives all his cars. So this car will get a few miles on it from time to time. “It drives like a brand new car,” he says, smiling.

When seven-time NASCAR Champ Dale Earnhardt wasn’t driving around the track in his famous #3 Chevy, he was hauling hay around the farm in this 1967 Ford F-600 dump truck. Photo by Tom Cotter.

Chapter 87 – Earnhardt’s Dumper

Lars Ekberg invited me to his home in North Carolina to show me his great cars, some of which were barn-finds. As we walked from garage to garage, we kept passing a big old Ford dump truck, nasty and neglected. I didn’t pay any attention to it.

As I was about to say thank you and goodbye, Ekberg said to me, “You know, that old truck has an interesting story. It used to belong to Dale Earnhardt, Senior.” I stopped in my tracks. “Can you tell me more?” I asked.

“My buddy Jimmy Sides went to school with Dale,” he said. “They were lifelong friends.” Ekberg explained that Earnhardt had owned the 1967 F-600 truck for a long time and had used it at his nearby farm in Mooresville, North Carolina, to haul around hay for horses. Sides bought it from Dale about 20 years ago to use when feeding his own horses, but parked it in a barn about 15 years ago and never took it out again.

“When Jimmy passed away in 2010, his wife called me up and asked if I wanted the old truck,” Ekberg said. “She gave it to me. The title is still in Dale’s name.” So there the truck continues to sit, last inspected in 2000. Ekberg is undecided what he will do with the old relic. But one thing is for certain—he owns the world’s largest Dale Earnhardt souvenir.

I had no idea the Galpin guys (or, at least, Beau Boeckmann) were such Ed Roth enthusiasts. Not only did Boeckmann just buy the Orbitron and plans to restore it, but the Galpin collection also includes Roth’s Rotar, Globe Hopper and Great Speckled Bird. Press release follows:

VAN NUYS, Calif. (March, 2008) – A lost artifact from the pinnacle of the Custom era has been found, and is now in California for a complete and faithful restoration. Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s Orbitron, a far-out bubble-topped show car built in 1964 and lost shortly thereafter, was recently uncovered in northern Mexico, serving as a makeshift dumpster in front of an adult bookshop! Michael Lightbourn – nicknamed “the West Texas Scout” for his ability to find abandoned automotive treasures – spotted and rescued the fiberglass-bodied hot rod, which is missing its original acrylic bubble top and front end but is otherwise fairly complete, down to the original engine, chrome Astro wheels and most of its bodywork.

Beau Boeckmann of Galpin Motors acquired the car shortly after its recovery from Mexico, and plans to completely restore the car to its original condition at Galpin Auto Sports (G.A.S.) with input from Roth experts and employees that were part of the original build.

“Being a huge fan of Big Daddy Roth, it’s a great privilege and honor, not only to own this car, but to bring it back to its former glory,” Boeckmann says. “Our goal is to make sure this piece of automotive history receives the accurate restoration it deserves.”

Once the car is restored to its former glory, Orbitron will join other Ed Roth cars in the Galpin Collection, including the Rotar (Roth Air Car) that was built in 1962 and actually hovered, the Globe Hopper three wheeled custom, The Great Speckled Bird chopper, as well as Roth’s daily driver Honda CVCC, which is covered in pinstriping and paint from his days as a sign painter at Knott’s Berry Farm. Other Galpin Kustom Kulture artifacts include a replica of Grandpa Munster’s Dragula, a ’52 Lincoln Lido built by George “King of the Kustomizers” Barris, Kenneth “Von Dutch” Howard’s 1970 Toad, hand-made Von Dutch art, tools and firearms, and an XK140 Jaguar that was customized by “the Da Vinci of the garage.”

Though we’ve been at this whole blogging thing since January of last year, the end of 2007 marks our first full year of posting, and if we haven’t presented you with something awesome having to do with vintage/collector cars every day this year, then we’ve certainly tried. So, just as we did last year, we’ve compiled the top Hemmings blog posts of the year, based on the number of pageviews recorded for each post.

#10 – Fast, anti-furious: Supra-LeMans. The Hemmings Auto blogs made a new friend this year in Ralf Becker and his excellent German site, Chromjuwelen. In a lot of ways, his automotive tastes jive with ours, so it’s no surprise that he convinced Atari to give him a 1972 Pontiac LeMans, into which he stuffed a 1991 Toyota Supra’s 3.0-liter turbocharged six-cylinder and six-speed manual transmission. David Traver Adolphus translated the project into English for us and even made sure the LeMans made it into the pages of Hemmings Motor News.

#9 – 28 Days of Ferrari: Day IV. Through April and May of this year DTA presented 28 different Ferraris from throughout the marque’s history, all in a lead-up to RM’s Ferrari auction at Maranello on May 20. The star of both the auction and the series ended up being the 1962 Le Mans-winning, Phil Hill/Olivier Gendebien-driven, Fantuzzi-bodied 1962 Ferrari 330 TRI/LM Testa Rossa Spyder, chassis #0808, engine #0808.

#6 – who is Ron Pratte? It never fails: Whenever SPEED Channel re-runs the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auctions from the last couple of years, viewers frantically google Ron Pratte, the private millionaire who bought some of the most high-profile cars at those auctions. We dug a little deeper to answer the question that was on our minds as well.

#5 – oh, so that’s where I left it… Ed Roth’s Orbitron found. All props to the H.A.M.B., where I first saw this, but as the story made the rounds on the Internet over August and September, a lot of links eventually pointed back at our post about the discovery of one of Roth’s lesser known show cars – being used as a dumpster outside an adult bookstore in Mexico. We hear it is undergoing a full restoration.

#4 – this is why we run stolen car alerts. Happy endings don’t come too often when a collector car is stolen, but the story of Don Lavender’s 1967 Camaro is a bit different, thanks to the get-out-the-word effort of the Gilmore Car Museum.

#3 – So that’s where my old beer cans went: inside the Trabant factory. This year marked a number of anniversaries for significant collector cars, but the anniversary that sparked the most attention among the mainstream press was that of the Trabant’s, and we helped celebrate that history when DTA found some behind-the-scenes video of the Trabant factory. Unfortunately, the copyright Nazis over at YouTube have since ganked the videos. Also unfortunately, the lowrider Trabant post didn’t garner as much attention.

#2 – Skoda Capri 205 woody-not the good kind. Couldn’t get enough Eastern European automotive bizarreness? Neither could DTA, and neither could a good portion of the Internet, as we saw when DTA’s post about a Prague-based Skoda with unique wheels. A lot of commenters could relate seeing it in the streets, but we never got an adequate explanation.

#1 – almost free garage heat – just drink a lot of soda. If we were basing this list on the number of comments a post generated, this post would still win. If we were basing this list on the quality of comments a post generated, this post would be all-time champion. Funny enough, it’s probably also the most off-topic post of the year, but anytime you tell people how they can build something for cheap that will lessen their utility bills, you’re sure to get a good response. I promise that version 2.0 is on its way. Just need to empty a couple hundred more soda cans.

Roth built the Mysterion in 1963 with twin Thunderbird 406 V-8s, backed by twin Ford C-6 automatic transmissions and twin 1948 Ford banjo rear axles. As the story goes, after a year on the show circuit, the car was scheduled to head back to Roth’s shop in the fall of 1964, but only bits and pieces arrived; the majority of the car, including the unique drivetrain, had gone mysteriously missing. And if you’re sure you saw it at the 2005 Detroit Autorama, that was simply Dave Shuten’s very convincing clone/replica.

Ryan’s the kind of guy who knows (and ain’t telling) the whereabouts of James Dean’s Little Bastard, so if he don’t know where the Mysterion’s hiding, then likely nobody does.

Actually, were this 1995, I wouldn’t have expected to find the Orbitron anywhere else, but since the explosion in Roth-mania since the man’s death six years ago, the fact that it served as a trash bin outside of an adult bookstore in Mexico is pretty surprising, along with the fact that nobody recognized it until just recently. Of course, before that, it was used in a carnival for several years.

Looking at the pictures, it’s mighty rough, missing a lot of essential pieces, including the nosecone and the bubble top. But considering the length some guys have gone to not just restore, but re-create some Roth vehicles lately, I imagine this one will be hitting the shows again soon.